How I have been dealing with hypersensitivity to pain. (Open for advice)

[kag101]

first of all, i'm in my mid twenties, so i'm not old.

my body is either overly sensitive or i have some sort of OCD regarding physical pain. maybe both lol

i find it incredible how almost any activity that i start doing more regularly, BOOM. some sort of physical discomfort kicks in. it's really tiresome.

i tried in the past to use a "macho" approach to that, so i'd simply try to ignore the pain signals. didn't work at all.

 

activities that i feel some discomfort:

• driving → ankle. because i have to lift it relatively high, it gets sorta painful after a while 
• piano →  pinkie finger gets tired soon
• writing→  my index finger starts to feel weird
• mouse → either my wrist or my elbow (probably because of the height of the table) 
• cellphone →  my tendinitus kicks in especially in my forearm. (when i hold the phone in the most ergonomically correct way)
• playing soccer → my feet, especially if i'm shooting the ball too much. my knees, if i start running a bit.
• speaking → my throat gets really dry. then, it starts to get painful to talk
• watching lectures → i always have to sit in the middle of the class. otherwise my neck starts hurting. 

my biggest fear is that it becomes something chronic. so after any sign of discomfort, i usually get hyperaware of it and i stop the activity.

 

my strategy nowadays is this:

1) self-negotiate.

for example, regarding soccer i bought a lighter ball. regarding my phone, i'm thinking of selling my big-ass iPhone and buy an iPhone Mini.

2) do longer experiments with things that i think that causes me pain.

for example, the thing about my pinkie finger while playing the piano. instead of stop playing as soon as i feel the slightest discomfort, i set a longer period of time for doing the activity. this helps to differentiate true pain vs psychological pain. because then i don't jump into conclusions after just a small evidence.

3) i do not try to correct my "technique" --> focus on natural form

when i get overly focused on having a perfect form, it ends up backfiring.

example: a few years ago, i was doing a bunch of vocal exercises to stop my throat pain. result? my voice got extremely breathy, which made matters worse. i started to lose my voice really quickly.

4) do more fun things

when my day is full of fun activities, then i usually don't think about the pain. but when i have too much free time or if i'm stressed, then the pain gets amplified. 

 

i don't lack any vitamins. i considered going to a rheumatologist to see if it helps somehow.

anyway, i feel like i've improved with dealing with this by 40%, which is good. but i was curious to see if anybody has gone through a similar thing.

i'm more interested in psychological strategies than health tips (such as going to acupuncture).

but anyway, feel free to say whatever is on your mind. thanks

[seriousman24]

Prioritize all physical health related strategies before you go for any psychological ones, because you were fine before and now you aren't so even if there was a psychological trigger behind all of this the best solution is a physical one, I believe that sometimes it's because your energy has become too much for just your body to handle, I know there's yoga for that but easiest thing to change is diet, I'm only here to provide anecdotal advice based on my life, so uuh that kind of sounds like nerve weakness so I dunno what you eat but for me I only started resuscitating from catatonic schizophrenia(the "worst" psychosomatic psychiatric "disorder") once I started on keto and later on I found out eating pork(ribs had the most effect) restored my nerves and calmness, I backtracked on the research I had studied so far and vitamin b1 seemed to be lacking which pork has alot of, of course other foods have lots of b1 too but somehow it didn't have anywhere near the necessary impact that solving it's deficiency is described to have, so to confirm if b1 was really what was having this immense restorative effect I order some benfotiamine(higher absortion b1) and it worked miracles on me, going to try water soluble b1 too, maybe your energies need more of certain foods now than before, maybe you need to update your body somehow, try high doses of b1 or b12 or b vitamins, they help nerve methylation, I have yet to try b12 since I'm relatively poor but it could work, remember with vitamins and supplements you need the right versions for you, some people report benfotiamine not doing much for them(?) but normal b1 one in high doses does, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3888748/(article on activated b12 used for rheumatoid arthritis/neuropathy just like b1 is used for); luckily you are both wealthy and early on the problem so good luck, just remember first exhaust all physical options, sorry for my horrible mental schizobabble and text format but I forgot to mention try some vitamin d/k2 maybe magnesium(I'm too poor to get the best versions so dunno), since it also helped abit(I take it off and on since it causes a burning sensation that's actually helpful in controlled amounts).

Edited April 16, 2022 by seriousman24

[BipolarGrowth]

Part of the problem is that you are associating these various sensations as being painful which will in turn make them feel more painful. 
 

I think trying to make things more comfortable for yourself in the ways you mentioned will help in the short term, but finding a different way to interpret and categorize these sensations might do more in the long term. 

[Raze]

Try “break through pain” by Shinzen Young